Thursday, April 10, 2008

fear of flying and of family....by judi sadowsky

as most mothers of adult children know, siblings don't always get along. after the reading this week's issue of the new yorker magazine i must say i felt a lot better about my children's relationship.

it seems that the other day columbia university decided to hold a conference to celebrate ericajong's "fear of flying" as a feminist classic. the auditorium was filled to capacity to hear a discussion of jong's "seminal" work. when questions from the audience were invited, who should stand up but suzannadaou, ericajong's sister. it seems that suzanna had been harboring a thirty-five year resentment against her sister who had used the character of her and her husband in her book. she was willing, she said, as she stood at the microphone, to forgive her sister of using her but could not forgive her for writing that her husband crawled into erica's (isadora's) bed and asked her to perform fellatio. suzanna said that while she and erica were extremely close, she guessed that her speaking out would probably cause jong to stop speaking to her for some time. "i gave myself permission to be a bitch," she said with a smile.

i don't know if their mother is still alive but i am hoping she is dead. if she is not, i am sure she would rather be dead than to hear one of her daughter's go after another like that, and in public no less. suddenly my two look like angels.

1 comment:

Since you know nothing of the truth of Erica's lies, you are worrying about my 96 year old mother for no good reason. As a matter of fact, she could not countenance her own daughter's books and hardly read them. I was a good and loving sister. Erica came to Beirut because my home welcomed her. Her payback deserved to be much more than I belatedly bestowed upon her. I have no regrets except that Erica has no remorse.